I have an HP 6500t coming soon... question about installing a new hard drive on it.

After ordering my 6500t, I decided it would be a good idea to speed things up a little bit by also ordering a 7200 RPM (80 gig) hard drive for it. Now, when I get my laptop.. the first thing I plan on doing is reformatting it to get rid of the bloatware. The hard drive that is coming with it is a 120 gig 5400 RPM. What I'm wondering is... what is the the best way to go about installing the new 7200 RPM drive into it w/ a fresh install of vista on it? Would I first reformat the 120 gig, then make a clone, then put the 7200 drive in? I'm pretty clueless as to how all of this works, so any help is appreciated.

 

I'm not 100% sure about this, but from some of the stuff that I've picked up on the forums, doesn't the larger size of the 5400 RPM drive somewhat offset the difference in RPMs?

 

I personally would stick with the 5400RPM 120GB drive 10x over an 80GB 7200RPM drive.

 

First off, If you are going to purchase another HDD, go with something larger than 80GB, especially if you are installing Vista on it. Second, after you get your laptop don't reformat right away, burn yourself a set of recovery disks first so you have them for the future. Next, if you plan on using the 80GB or whatever other HDD you might buy, you don't need to reformat the 120GB that comes with the laptop since you won't be using it. After you get the extra HDD go ahead install it in the laptop and then install your OS. Don't bother with reformatting the HDD that comes with your laptop, reinstalling the OS, then ghosting it to another HDD, unless you aren't going to buy the second HDD for a while after you get your laptop.

By the way, you can get a 200GB 7200RPM SATA HDD from Newegg for about $200. Do a little searching on the internet for prices of HDDs because you might as well save a little more money and get a bigger HDD, it will be well worth it. A couple sites to check out: Newegg, TigerDirect, Outpost.com, or use google to earch around.